How do Chineese people type on computers?

Question

I mean each word is it's own character isn't it? That would be one huge keyboard. I hate to sound naive and all but, I was just sort of wondering.

Answer 1

i believe its sorta like ours, only yknow how we have a shift button so we can do caps and lowercase? they have a bunch of different "shift" buttons. so they may have 30 different keys, plus, another 5 or 10 layers of keys, so they could have a few hundred characters to choose from.

Answer 2

The Chinese keyboard is the same as ours, but it has phonic characters as well. Chinese type the phonetic symbols and choose from the word characters that are displayed. In a sense, they are typing sounds and the software reads each sound as one, two, or more words. There is an extra step involved, that of choosing the desired word from those displayed. This is actually a very automatic and pretty much as fast as typing in English is for us.

Answer 3

Yeah I was wondering myself. My friend told me you go to Control Panel, then go to the Language options, and choose the Chinese language and follow the steps from there. If you're successful at doing so, there should be a toolbar that will appear at the top corner of your screen which allows you to toggle between the two languages when you click on it. Chinese people type in the anglicised spelling of how a chinese character is pronounced, and then the program will come out with a list of different Chiense characters which correspond to that anglicised spelling pronounciation, then they select with a mouse or with arrow keys which character they intended to use, and voila, it appears on the computer screen.

Answer 4

oh dear, there's many ways of typing chinese character, if u r using a mere alphabet keyboard, then u will need to use to use a kind of software which allows u to type the word by spelling, of course, it takes time by using this method becoz u need to find the word by spelling it out. the other way, you dunt need a huge keyboard to type a chinese word, all u need is a chinese keyboard which lead u to constitute a word. just like english, u form a word by using alphabet, but in chinese, it forms by chararcter, theres a set of alphabet (which more correctly to called it bu shou) , that u need to type out a chinese word. hope it helps

Answer 5

A lot of Chinese people type in English, but there is a chinese keyboard.

It uses only 24 keys, like the english, leaving out Z and X.

There are dozens of Chinese languages, and this is a setup that they're all trained in to type.

Answer 6

In nearly all Windows XP computers, there is software for typing Chinese. Chinese can be converted into our alphabet, in a system called pinyin. For example, "apple" in pinyin is "ping guo". Using the software, Chinese people can type in the pinyin, select the character they wish to use, and then it appears on the computer. I know some people who can type in Chinese as quickly as people typing in English.

Answer 7

(1)chinese keyboard
(2)"pinyin" - the standard system of romanized spelling for transliterating Chinese
(3)writing device - you just write the chinese word and the software will recognize it
(4)copy and paste from any online English-Chinese Dictionary

Answer 8

Hehe - the characters can be combined, and the keyboard is a standard keyboard with a standard set of chinese letters on it.

Answer 9

i was going to say "with their hands" but computers are made with software, keyboards are pretty similar if not the same. its like if i were to type in arabic the software on the computer would automatically switch the letters to the correct form (the way a letter looks is different depending on where it is in the word).

Answer 10

I thought they had to learn English to be able to use a computer keyboard, but then I could be just as naive!